The great specialist nodded. “Go on,” he said, quietly. “Fourth frontal convolution! And it was a month or two, I have no doubt, before you noticed any serious symptoms supervening?”
“Exactly so,” Mrs. Trevennack made answer, very much relieved. “It was all of a month or two. But from that day forth—from the very beginning, I mean—he had a natural horror of going BENEATH a cliff, and he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to be perfectly sure there was nobody at all anywhere above to hurt him.” And then she went on to describe in short but graphic phrase how he loved to return to the place of his son’s accident, and to stand for hours on lonely sites overlooking the spot, and especially on a crag which was dedicated to St. Michael.
The specialist caught at what was coming with the quickness, she thought, of long experience. “Till he fancied himself the archangel?” he said, promptly and curiously.
Mrs. Trevennack drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. “Yes,” she answered, flushing hot. “Till he fancied himself the archangel. There—there were extenuating circumstances, you see. His own name’s Michael; and his family—well, his family have a special connection with St. Michael’s Mount; their crest’s a castled crag with ‘Stand fast, St. Michael’s!’ and he knew he had to fight against this mad impulse of his own—which he felt was like a devil within him—for his daughter’s sake; and he was always standing alone on these rocky high places, dedicated to St. Michael, till the fancy took full hold upon him; and now, though he knows in a sort of a way he’s mad, he believes quite firmly he’s St. Michael the Archangel.”
Yate-Westbury nodded once more. “Precisely the development I should expect to occur,” he said, “after such an accident.”
Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her seat in her relief. “Then you attribute it to the accident first of all?” she asked, eagerly.
“Not a doubt about it,” the specialist answered. “The region you indicate is just the one where similar illusory ideas are apt to arise from external injuries. The bruise gave the cause, and circumstances the form. Besides, the case is normal—quite normal altogether. Does he have frequent outbreaks?”
Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had any. Except to herself, and that but seldom, he never alluded to the subject in any way.
Yate-Westbury bit his lip. “He must have great self-control,” he answered, less confidently. “In a case like that, I’m bound to admit, my prognosis—for the final result—would be most unfavorable. The longer he bottles it up the more terrible is the outburst likely to be when it arrives. You must expect that some day he will break out irrepressibly.”
Mrs. Trevennack bowed her head with the solemn placidity of despair. “I’m quite prepared for that,” she said, quietly; “though I try hard to delay it, for a specific reason. That wasn’t the question I came to consult you about to-day. I feel sure my poor husband’s case is perfectly hopeless, as far as any possibility of cure is concerned; what I want to know is about another aspect of the case.” She leaned forward appealingly. “Oh, doctor,” she cried, clasping her hands, “I have a dear daughter at home—the one thing yet left me. She’s engaged to be married to a young man whom she loves—a young man who loves her. Am I bound to tell him she’s a madman’s child? Is there any chance of its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?”